Five decades’ process of breaking more than four centuries of Church-State ties saw a major break-through at the stroke of the new millennium (the year 2000), with the implementation of legislative reforms aimed at giving the Church of Sweden a greater degree of liberty, while extending greater freedom to other religious communities in Sweden. Almost a decade after this historic legislation most stakeholders claim the impact of the reform has been significant. Indeed the decision to server Church-State ties for whatever purpose or reason, after such a long standing relation between the two, will by all means have implications for the Church that is separated, the State and the so called free churches and other religions in Sweden. Thus, this field study seeks to investigate the resultant impact of delimiting governmental power in the religious domain on the now autonomous church and the implications the separation has had for other “non-state churches” as well as the secularized state government in Sweden almost ten years after the reforms.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the content of Art in lower secondary school education. What happens when the content is equal to a visual culture that young people live in and take part of in their everyday life? To be able to make a transition from traditional art education such as learning traditional art technics, to explore and work with contemporary visual culture that concerns young people to day, it is crucial to find out what kind of visual culture is relevant to teenagers to day. When I started working at the University of Gävle in Sweden I had the opportunity to look back at my own practise as an art teacher. In a project with pupils between the ages of 13 to 16 were asked to show in photographs and clarifying text, what they thought possibleto do technically in the art class classroom. The 13-year olds took photographs of objects that represented what they saw as possible to do in that classroom. After the pupils had taken, shown and commented on their photographs a discussion with the pupils about the content, possibilities and limitations that they experienced in that art class room followed. As a second part of the project pupils aged 16 were then invited to discuss the same questions. The forms of visual culture that turned out to be the most important to both groups were digital forms of pictures, such as film, photographs made with their mobile phones, and often published on social forums such as Facebook or Instagram, as well as computer games with there visually designed settings. In conclusion the photographs and the discussions following showed that when the pupils could work with a visual media that they meet in their everyday life it gave meaning to the art subject. Some even expressed that in the art class room “everything was possible”.

11. Får ungas visuella kultur plats i skolans bildsal?

Ahrenby, Hanna

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Culture Studies, Religious Studies and Educational Sciences, Art education.

In this study we want to call attention to and discuss two aspects of importance for work toward change regarding fundamental values through action research. The first aspect is time, and taking it into account according to “the action research spiral”. The second aspect concerns the importance of critical events for making progress and challenging preconceived notions. We also stress that researchers as “outsiders” have the opportunity to overview the process in a way that the other participants (insiders) do not. The empirical data is collected from an action research project on science and gender conducted inSweden with teachers from preschool and K-6. The collaboration was proceeded during 2005 to 2010, a total of 57 months.

22. Inskolning - barnens första möte med förskolan

Andersson, Lisa

et al.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Culture Studies, Religious Studies and Educational Sciences.

Berglund, Katarina

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Culture Studies, Religious Studies and Educational Sciences.

This study is an attempt to investigate religious perceptions and its development, function and connection to religious practise within the Swedish extreme metal scene. This is performed mainly by a qualitative method of investigation, studying lyrical content published on a number of extreme metal albums, thereafter relating the lyrical progression to the progession of the scene as a whole and also to the development of individual religious belief and practise.

The lyrically expressed manifestations of religiosity within the extreme metal scene prove to be related to religious practise in some cases, most visibly in the Christian parts of the scene.The study also indicates that development of religious expression often is evident regardless of religious preference. This development also regularly relates to an increase in musical evolution and prowess often achieved with increased age and maturity.

Musically and lyrically, the extreme metal scene displays transgressive attributes which assist both individual and group in the process of creating identity, meaning and individuality.Experiencing extreme metal, in concert or in the privacy of one´s own home, can be one way of perceiving spirituality in this modern age.

This essay researches the prevalence of Gnostic influences in contemporary music lyrics, more exclusively within the context of the extreme metal scene. A resurgence of such topics has also been evident in contemporary music; not surprisingly, as music in general is part of the foundations of culture, and in a wider aspect, of society at large. The essay is performed using a hermeneutic method, interpreting music lyrics and discussing them from a background of cultural and religious theory. The purposes of researching the influences of Gnosticism in this environment are to determine the presence of Gnostic thought in extreme metal lyrics, research the eventual re-interpretations of historical sources of Gnosticism, and to discuss the acknowledged Gnostic influences in the displayed art form in a contemporary cultural perspective, related to cultural aspects such as secularization, modernity and globalization.

Sources include music lyrics appropriate to the subject matter at hand as well as previously published interviews.

The results of the investigation demonstrate that there are multiple interpretations of Gnostic thought apparent in extreme metal lyrics, varying from slight re-interpretations to more extensive ones, as apparent in what is identified as a chaos-gnostic current. The Gnostic material has in the latter scenario been integrated into an originally satanic worldview and as a result has become a major part of the chaos-gnostic belief system. The chaos-gnostic current has appeared in a highly secular surrounding, and the results of the essay propose that a secular surrounding can breed elements of trangression within individuals, leading to the resurgence of oppositional counter-cultural characteristics and an awakening of alternative spirituality with oppositional overtones.

This essay investigates interpretations of evil as expressed in contemporary music, focusing mainly on lyrics in contemporary popular music. The purpose is to analyze whether there is acertain aesthetic embracing of risk and innovation on display when discussing such subject matters, and to relate such aesthetic connotations to cultural and religious aspects.

Lyrical interpretations of evil in a musical context appear to be existent in different forms andare in various ways attempts to integrate the existence of evil acts, as leading to suffering and pain, by incorporating such themes into lyrical material.

There appears to be a possible aesthetic embraced when artists are advocating evil acts, however, not totally separable from the aesthetics of the extreme metal scene. Such forms of creative practice appear as reliant on the dialectic between historical perceptions of morality,modern society as globalized, segmented and restructured and the reoccurrence of religion in a secularized perspective.

Themes regarding evil appear in this form of aesthetic in different ways to traditional discourse; making use of historical and contemporary images of evil and portraying them as desirable in various ways. In some instances such creative release is also linked to religious belief and practise, making the artistic performance equivalent of a transcendental event.

The thesis examines the level of historical analysis in the works of two third/ninth century Muslim historians, al-Baladhuri and at-Tabari, including their underlying legal, political and socio-economic concerns as manifested in their narratives. By comparing and contextualising their histories regarding the caliphate of ‘Umar, in relation to their social institutions and scholarly disciplines, the purpose is to highlight the subjective agency of the historians as well as the structure of the historiographical discourse in which they formulated their narratives. Based on the notion of discourses as well-defined areas of social fact that defines the forms of (historical) knowledge in societies, the thesis applies de Certeau’s theory of discourses in order to analyse the formation of historical discourses in relation to social institutions and scholarly traditions. By linking the narrative differences to the historians’ scholarly contexts and political concerns, the thesis also show their subjective agency to form certain narratives of history depending on political and scholarly interests, although expressed in the form of the khabar-tradition of ‘Abbasid period. It is argued that the narratives represent attempts to explain social and economic factors involved in civilisational history by means of the accumulated body of what in modern scholarship is labeled “religious knowledge”. Thereby, it also problematises current debates on the level of analytical thinking in early Muslim historiography and suggest new approaches to the subject by discourse analysis.

The history of Banu Umayya has since the collapse of the caliphate occupied a major part in Islamic historiography. The present thesis analyses the presentation of the Umayyads in Ibn Khaldun’s al-Muqaddima and its relation to previous historical traditions. The thesis examines the social and intellectual context in which Ibn Khaldun stood and how it is represented in his historiography, while also providing an overview of the various socio-political, intellectual and historiographical developments in Islam. The theoretical perspectives are based on the concept of agency, examining the intellectual room for manoeuvre that the historian disposed of while composing the works. The relation between the past-as-history and the historical past is emphasised and analysed by examination of narrative arrangements and content in relation to the historians’ contexts. Rather than viewing Ibn Khaldun as an exception, the study clarifies his contextual representativity by analysing his views on the Umayyads. The thesis also discusses the historiographical significance of the Umayyad history for the later development of Islam, while thereby attempting to open the field of research regarding the Umayyad history and its importance as self-definitions among later movements, historians and traditions of Islam.

According to the Bologna Directives teaching at Swedish Colleges and Universities should be outcomes-based rather than content-based. Inspired by the assessment principles involved in setting grades for art education portfolios, professor Peter Gill at the University of Gävle has developed a model of educational assessment matrices, the purpose of which is to clarify the procedures involved in assessing educational tasks by focussing on learning outcomes. However, the implementation of this initiative has been met with certain difficulties. Intended users have lacked a common conceptual framework and have expressed a reluctance to embrace a scoring system that requires congruence between aggregated subjective judgements and Bologna grades. One reason may be that the underlying epistemological assumptions are difficult to clarify. A further reason is also postulated on the basis of epistemological collisions between different ideological positions. The following text takes as its starting point observed misunderstandings concerning the nature of intuitive authentic assessment as well as practical experience of making use of such assessment procedures. The article argues for the use of clarifying and systematizing the assessment principles in order to increase methodological transparency for students and colleagues. It is also argued that implementing such assessment strategies provides improved possibilities for pedagogical and didactical development.

35. Conceptualizing concepts

Andrén, Maria

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Culture Studies, Religious Studies and Educational Sciences, Education.

Within the scientific community, methodological concepts occupy a central position. Many students devote much effort trying to learn "correct" meanings for the concepts with which they come in contact. Another way to approach what might be termed ‘ontology of conceptualization’ is to study how concepts are used. The subject of this investigation is an exploration of the use of some methodological concepts as they arise in academic dissertations. In the theses that were studied it was found that concepts are not used coherently in a lexical sense. While use may be consistent with knowledge claims as they are elucidated in the texts, there is a need to distinguish what is being described in terms of the use of concepts from other possible meaning-options. A didactic conclusion from this analysis is that the teaching of research methodology will be more successful when it focuses on differences between concepts and how they are presented and used in given research contexts, rather than attempting to providing general all-encompassing definitions.

36. Det pedagogiska övervägandet – om att utveckla pedagogisk klokhet

Andrén, Maria

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Culture Studies, Religious Studies and Educational Sciences, Education.

The basic assumption underlying this study is that in completing any pedagogical task there is always an aesthetic dimension involved. Three archetypal pedagogical approaches are enacted and examined by focusing on pedagogical activity as a form of Art. The examples are constructed in order to explicate pedagogically “problematic” approaches. The purpose is to understand and enlighten the pedagogical impact of certain behaviors by the using of aesthetic analysis. One suggested result of the study will be to show how hard, or impossible, it is to distinguish between aspects of content and form in any pedagogical process. Another suggested conclusion will be to show how enhanced awareness of, and reflection on, aesthetic considerations in pedagogical contexts usually deemed "non-aesthetic" might serve a useful tool in professional pedagogical development as a teacher.

In this presentation, some tensional trends within mentoring, which we call a contradiction between collaboration and assessment, will be addressed. The aim is threefold: firstly to describe and compare the development of mentoring programs in Finland and Sweden at a system level, secondly to illustrate how the various mentoring systems have been experienced by the persons involved and thirdly to discuss the political and ideological circumstances and the possible effects of these solutions. The study is based on empirical data from the Finnish and Swedish contexts, both on the level of mentors’ and NQTs’ experiences, based on interviews and/or focus group discussions and on the national policy level, based on policy documents on teacher education and, in the Swedish part, the responses of teacher educators to them.

The tentative result indicates profound differences between the two national initiatives of mentoring in Finland and Sweden. The mentoring process in Finland, peer group mentoring, is clearly based on social constructivist assumptions on knowledge and learning. The integration of formal, informal and nonformal learning as well as the equality and professional autonomy as persons and professionals is central. The proposed system of a mandatory induction system in Sweden is, however, very different with mentoring, probation year, registration of teachers and possible assessment of NQTs as central components. In the presentation these issues will be discussed upon in terms of teachers’ continuing professional learning and development.

45. Mentoring as Dialogue, Collaboration and/or Assessment?

Aspfors, Jessica

et al.

Åbo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland.

Fransson, Göran

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Culture Studies, Religious Studies and Educational Sciences, Curriculum studies.

Heikkinen, Hannu

Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.

In this chapter, some tensional trends within mentoring, which we call a contradiction between collaboration and assessment, are addressed. The aim is threefold: First, to describe and compare the development of mentoring programmes in Finland and Sweden at the system level; second, to illustrate how the various mentoring systems have been experienced by the persons involved; and third, to discuss the political and ideological circumstances and the possible effects of these solutions. The study is based on empirical data gathered in Finland and Sweden and examines the experiences of mentors and newly qualified teachers (NQTs) as well as the relevant national policies. The findings indicate profound differences between the two national initiatives of mentoring in Finland and Sweden. The mentoring process in Finland, using peer group mentoring, is based on social constructivistic assumptions regarding knowledge and learning. The integration of formal, informal and non-formal learning, as well as the equality and professional autonomy as a person and as a professional, is central. The system of mandatory induction in Sweden is very different, with mentoring, a probation year and the registration of teachers being central components. In such a system, the mentors' role of avoiding direct or indirect involvement in the assessment may become more challenging.

In this paper, we describe contested practices of mentoring within and between Australia, Finland and Sweden. Our study is based on national policy documents and empirical data from participants involved in mentoring. The theoretical framework will build on practice theory (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis & Heikkinen 2012). The aim is to demonstrate three archetypes persisting in literature and practices: mentoring as supervision, support and collective self-development. In Australia, we find the three kinds of mentoring jostling with one another. In Finland, the perspective of collective self-development is emphasized. In Sweden, the traditional model of mentoring (support) has been typical since 1995, with a current reform of teacher induction which turns mentoring more into supervision.

Our paper will show (1) that the meanings of 'mentoring' are contested within and between the countries involved; (2) that the three forms of mentoring identified represent three different projects: (a) assisting newly qualified teachers (NQTs) to pass through probation or (b) traditional mentoring of NQTs by more experienced teachers or (c) peer-group mentoring (PGM); and (3) that these three projects, that could be simultaneously present, also involve and imply quite different practice architectures in the form of different materialeconomic, social-political and cultural-discursive arrangements.

47. Historiskt möte mellan lärare och elev i modern stil

Aspgren, Peter

et al.

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Culture Studies, Religious Studies and Educational Sciences.

Hedlund, Sofie

University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Culture Studies, Religious Studies and Educational Sciences.